Source: Statistics and Bar Graph | BigStock

Knowing your social media marketing goals and finding the right tools to attain it is not enough. You also need to know whether your campaign is working or not. Thus, social media monitoring is also integral for your SMM efforts.

Know Your Objective

Every action must have a goal—and not just any ordinary or broad objective, but something that is clear, specific, reasonable and actionable. It is simply to know what you want to discover on your social media marketing efforts.

Do you want to get alerts on what other people are saying about you or your brand? Perhaps you want to know what your potential market needs or want to know. Or it can be as simple as finding anyone that will mention your chosen keyword so you can join in with the conversation.

Know Your Priorities

Social media marketing can be overwhelming, especially when picking out the platform to choose. That’s why you also have to decide what battle to join. Triaging all social media messages that come your way could help when focusing on what’s important. If you have a big business with a handful of known products, you can categorize your SMM campaign based on it or by type of messages that you want to track.

Know Where to Monitor

Since there a lot of social media networks available, monitoring each of them can be daunting. That’s why you need to know which platform to monitor. Find the ones that brings the most exposure for your brand, as well as where majority of your existing and potential market at hanging out in the digital world. This could also be helpful when wanting to know what channel to use when trying to listen on what other people say about your or your brand.

Know What to Monitor

Other than knowing where to monitor, you also need to know what to monitor. It all boils down to your campaign’s objectives. The marketing itself can be overwhelming, but monitoring your campaign’s success could be worse. Knowing what you’re looking for can help you manage your tracking efforts easily.

Know What Tools to Use

Of course, the best way to monitor your campaign is with the help of social media marketing tools. List down the things that you need to track and your chosen platform, and then find the right tool that would work well with your platform and deliver what you need.

Source: Statistics and Bar Graph | BigStock

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Source: Facebook User Profile | Official Website

You’ve probably not felt the pressure of completing your Facebook Profile before—until today. Recently, some users started seeing a percentage meter on their Facebook Profile.

The purported feature, which can be found at the top right corner of the About Page, is said to encourage users to complete the account details on their Timeline. It also appears that filling out the current city, hometown, and place where a user work yield higher percentage. Similar to LinkedIn and Google+, the profile is considered complete once the percentage meter reached 100 percent.

Complete Profile and Ad-Targeting Purposes

It is believed that percentage meter seen on Facebook Profile could come in handy for brands and businesses that also advertise on the social network. The feature is one way for businesses to improve their ad-targeting options. The additional data will give advertisers more information to target particular demographics, location and ages.

As of the moment, the completion meter appears as a blue loading bar and a “% Complete” message below. However, it is possible that it would provide more information soon, like what part of the profile needs filling out. But there’s also a chance that this feature won’t materialize, considering Facebook’s track record of testing a handful of features a year with many of which didn’t didn’t come to fruition.

Prior to this, it was reported that Facebook released a feature that is similar with Pinterest’s “want” option. This simply allows users to Want a product posted on the online pinboard.

The social network catered on this growing trend of engaging other users through images by offerings some brands to post images with actions such as “want”, “collect” and “like”. Other than that, images within a collection will also have a Buy link, which will send users to another site to conduct online purchase.

This featured called “Collections” was tested with Victoria’s Secret, Pottery Barn, Michael Kors, Wayfair, Neiman Marcus, Fab.com and Smith Optics. On the other hand, users won’t see the images from the said brands unless they are and their friends are a fan of the brand’s page.

Although its look similar with Pinterest’s e-commerce efforts, the images are designed to be discovered in a News Feed. In addition, the virtual pinboard lacks the Buy feature.

Whether Facebook is creating features similar to other social media sites these additional options are a way for the social networking giant to bring advertisements to more specific audiences.

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Source: Facebook Mobile | Official Website

Earlier this year, Facebook tested a new mobile unit that was designed to enable developers promote themselves. This time, the social networking giant makes it available to all developers. In fact, they’ve set up an automated page to those who wants to create and ad for their apps, as well as the analytics dashboard.

From Beta to All App Developers

Facebook first introduced the ad unit last August and conducted beta testing with select partners such as Fab, Kabam, Big Fish and TinyCo.

Now, the social network rolls out the feature to all app developers after claiming success during the beta testing. In addition, it was reported that TinyCo saw 50 percent higher click-through rates and “significantly higher” conversion rates vs. other mobile channels. They also saw an increase in engagement, as stated by Facebook Software Engineer Vijaye Raji on a blog post last Wednesday.

A select subset of Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs) has been testing mobile app install ads and saw similarly positive results. For example, Nanigans’ clients efficiently achieved 8-10x the reach compared to other mobile ad buys. Ad Parlor saw consistent CTR’s from news feed of 1-2% from engaged users looking for iPhone and Android games that their friends were playing.

The ad units on Facebook Mobile are designed to bring users to new applications. When a user clicks on ad, they will be directed to the App Store or Google Play—provided that he or she doesn’t have the mobile app on his or her device yet.

How Facebook’s Mobile Ad Unit Works

Last August, Facebook launched a mobile ad unit that is created to help mobile app developers to market themselves.

The ad unit is automatic, and app developers can buy a unit by simply filling out an online form. After that, devs can delineate which demo they are trying to reach and what their budget is. Once an ad unit is bought, app developers can use the social network’s analytics tools to monitor its performance.

This makes its easy for developers to launch their ad and monitor their insights using a simple flow on the App Dashboard. They can even leverage the Power Editor, the API or work with one of the network’s PMDs to create and manage their campaigns.

Raji noted that there is an audience for such a unit. There were also few independent studies saying that ads are more effective than traditional desktop ads. However, investors are still skeptical with Facebook’s odds of maintaining its revenues through mobile ads.

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Source: Internet by Darren Hester | MorgueFile

Although social media can be used to leverage a brand, it is still originally designed for Internet users to connect with one another. And what’s the best way to build and establish a network with your social media friends? Of course, great content! However, you should know where and how to find a great content to share with your network.

Google Alerts and Google Reader

Google Alerts and Google Reader are the best place to acquire great and relevant content for your social media marketing campaign. Google Alerts notifies you of your important keywords, while Google Reader allows you manage your blog subscriptions well.

Facebook Friend Lists

If you have a lot of Facebook friends, your News Feed maybe cluttered. However, you can control over this using the Friend List feature. It allows you to curate and filter the content that matters to you and your connection, enabling your find and share great and relevant posts to your network.

Twitter List and Trending Topic

Aside from Facebook Friend List, Twitter List and Trending Topic is also a great way to generate great content to share. Using your Twitter account, you can just simply check out the Trending Topic at the left side of your profile.

In addition, you can add relevant users on your Twitter List without necessarily following them. This will keep you in the know of what’s happening with the people or brands that you care about without flooding your Twitter feed. And when you’re update, you can share content that are not just relevant but also timely.

Paper.li and AllTop

Another great place to generate great and relevant content is through social media aggregator such as Paper.li and AllTop. Paper.li allows you to publish your own virtual news paper, while pulling information from various social media sites. AllTop, on the other hand, allows you to curate content and subscribe to your favorite blogs.

HootSuite

If you’re conducting social media marketing for your brand, having too many accounts can be overwhelming. That’s why you’ll need social media management system, and this is where HootSuite comes in. It allows you to manage multiple social media profiles, letting be up-to-date with all your connections without the need to open a lot of accounts. On the other hand, it lets you share great content to all your connections on one go.

If you know where to find great content, it will give you an insight of what matters most to your social media connection. In turn, you will also know which content to share.

The post Where to Find Great Social Media Content? appeared first on About Social Media.

Source: Facebook Emoticons | Official Website

Last week, a number of users started noticing that Facebook Comments now supports chat emoticons. It doesn’t work on status update, although users and page owners can use and see it on the comment section.

The news started to surface when a Reddit user posted an image that shows a number of emoticons appearing on the social network’s comment area. There are a number of smiley faces and animal images available for chat emoticons, just like the (Y) symbol for a thumbs-up icon. More icons can also be found on Facebook Emoticons website.

Emoticons were previously available on chat and messages, but it appears as a set of punctuation marks and characters elsewhere on the network. It also doesn’t work on embedded comment feature on various websites.

Emoticons on Facebook Mobile Messenger

In relation to this, Facebook rolled out a number of emoticons to its mobile messenger app. However, it uses a different set of images that cannot be recreated in Web chat or comments. The update was released for Android smartphones last August, and it also includes event creation and multi-photo upload functionalities.

With this new Android update, users now have a streamlined way to create new events. This feature was not supported on native Facebook apps before, while the mobile site supports event creation with cumbersome design elements.

The latest Android app also supports multi-photo uploads, which works the same as the social network’s Camera app for iPhone. With this feature, users can now browse all photos on their device, tap a couple of images, and upload them at once.

Here’s the Catch: Facebook Chat Emoticons on Pages

Although Facebook now supports chat emoticons, not every page owner can use it. That will depend on a business’ voice. This means that this feature may or may not be appropriate for exchange of messages with fans.

Some users even think that it could be a distraction when reading texts on Facebook. However, it only shows that it is no longer a matter of text, but also of emoticons on the social network.

The reason the feature was added on the social media is still unknown. Despite the speculations about the negative implications or shortcomings of the feature, it is noteworthy to know that emoticons are now available on Facebook. How it will be used effectively by individuals or business pages will now depend on its users.

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Source: Social Media | BigStock

It’s a no-brainer that social media is popular in the industry world nowadays because of the exposure that it can bring to a business. However, not every social networking platform can complement your brand’s online marketing campaign.

While choosing a social media that’s right for your business can be overwhelming, you can easily pick the network that’s right for you if you know your goals, audience, and capabilities.

Define Your Goals

Before deciding what social network to use, you have to decide on what you want to achieve first. You have to define your social media marketing goals, and make sure that it is specific, actionable, and reasonable. From here, you can choose which social network can deliver most of your needs, as well as help you meet your goals.

Know Your Traffic Handling Capabilities

It’s also important that you can determine how you can handle the traffic that social media may deliver to your business—most especially on your website. That’s because a website that can’t handle too much traffic can be shut down. In addition, more traffic could tantamount to more incoming messages that need your response. So, choose the social media website that can bring the traffic that you can handle.

Determine Your Audience’s Online Habits

Your audience’s online habit is also important in choosing which social media platform to use. That’s because it will determine where most of your traffic will come from. Since a user’s online habit will depend on his or her interests, it will also influence the type of content that they’ll read or sharing. Thus, pick the social network that majority of your audience use, and where you can deliver your content to garner the most traffic.

Find Your Resources

Finding your resources is actually the difficult part of social media marketing. Since the platform you’re trying to use requires interaction, you need to create and find the right resources that you can share online. That way, they will be compelled to read it, which could boost your website’s traffic.

Establish Time of Interaction

As mentioned earlier, social media can bring much traffic to your business. With a lot of people possibly reaching out to you for inquiries other reason, it can be daunting for you to respond to each of them. That’s why you need to establish a time wherein you won’t do anything but interact with your fans or followers, as well as draft press releases or official statement regarding a frequently discussed topic.

The post Social Media: What is the Right Platform for Your Business? appeared first on About Social Media.

Source: Setting Up Your Goals by Wax115 | MorgueFile

Many businesses launch a social media marketing program because they feel like it. They will just then be prompted to understand how it works and how it can be managed once there. Worse, some of them do social media marketing without a goal in mind.

Create a Business Overview

In order to know what you want your business to achieve through social media, you have to spell out your business’ overview first. That way, you’ll know why you need such campaign. Your business overview includes mission and history, revenue model, descriptions of products and services, definition of target audience, and an evaluation of your current marketing efforts.

Define Specific SMM Goals

While a goal helps you focus with what you want to achieve, it’s also difficult to attain if you won’t make it specific. Instead of saying you need to have “More Twitter Followers” or “More Facebook Fans,” you have to focus on engaging your target audience. Aside from being specific, it should also be actionable and reasonable.

One example of using social media as a research platform to validate a new product or service is engaging users to generate relevant and targeted traffic to your site, encouraging users to attend an event through social media.

Know Your Social Media Voice

One way for your social media marketing efforts to become successful is to create and implement your business voice. It should resonate with your brand, as well as your target audience. To do that, research your market’s demographic such as age, income, location, and possible reason for buying your products.

Choose the Right Platform

Choosing the right social media platform is also important for your online communication. Knowing what social network to use can be overwhelming, but you can break it down based on average age of its users, gender, and best use.

Plan and Execute Content Delivery

The hard part of the social media marketing is content delivery. Know how frequently you’d post content and respond to social engagement, the specific topics of content which you’ll create and share, how it can increase your social media engagement with your fans or followers, and social metrics. Your social metric should include the number of followers or fans, the volume of traffic that it generated to your site, how many times it was retweeted or shared.

Social media may be the answer to customer acquisition, but a short-sided definition of realistic results can only result to wasted time, customers, market share, and profitability. Therefore, it is important that you set up your social media marketing plan first before jumping in.

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Source: Map by Jane M. Sawyer | MorgueFile

Now that you have the reasons as to why your business needs a social media marketing strategy, it’s time create a roadmap that will help you through your campaign. It’s important that you have an outline of what you want your marketing efforts to bring to your business. That way, you would know whether you’re taking the right path or leading your business down the drain.

Setting Your Goals

The first thing you need to do when outlining your social media marketing campaign is to know your goal. This would help you know you campaign’s purpose, the tools that you will need, as well as figuring out how you can achieve and maintain it.

As a starting point of your road map, your goals will also help you keep your focus on your campaign. If you don’t have any distractions while doing your campaign, if will be easier for you to achieve your desired results.

Choosing a Platform

Now that you have a goal, the next thing you’ll need is a social media platform. While there are a bevy of social networking sites that you can choose from, start with what majority of your target audience use.

Other than that, you have to make sure that it is easy to use and can complement your campaign. That way, you’ll know how you can share content and interact with your network. Consider your chosen online platform as a vehicle that will drive your target audience to your business, while bringing your brand closer to them.

Creating a Profile

After knowing which social media platform to choose, the next thing you need to have is a profile. In real world, your business has brand name that allows your target customers to easily identify it. The same thing goes when you’re online. You need to brand your profile so that you can easily establish your online presence and build a relationship with your network.

Looking for Content to Share

Although social media marketing is aimed at helping you promote your business, it shouldn’t be used to immediately sell your products. Your profile should be a tool to build your brand’s credibility, so that more people will be encouraged to check out what you can offer. You can do this looking for relevant and valuable content that you can share with them.

Monitoring Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Of course, your social media marketing journey doesn’t end here. You have to keep on monitoring your campaign’s efforts. This will help you determine whether your strategy is working, and if your audience are pleased with your tactic, your business, and the products and services that you offer.

The post Creating Your Social Media Marketing Road Map appeared first on About Social Media.

Source: Google+ v3.2 for iOS and Android | App Store and Google Play

Google has rolled out a new version of their Google+ mobile app yesterday. The Google+ app version 3.2 is available for both Apple and Google. The new app versions brings support for Google+ pages, which allows page owners to post, comment and interact with their follower using their smartphone.

Google+ Version 2.3 on iOS and Android

Other than support for Google+ Pages, Anish Acharya, product manager for Google+ Mobile, shared additional information regarding the social media website’s new mobile version.

Today, we’re rolling out v3.2 of the Google+ app to Android and iOS; both versions include one of our most highly-requested features: support for Google+ pages. This gives page owners the ability to post, comment, and interact with their followers directly from their mobile device.

The mobile application includes a redesigned “Find People” feature for the Android handset. It also comes with an updated widget that users can add to their home screen. With the new mobile app version, users can now access their photos from posts with just a single tap.

On the other hand, the iOS version gets support for iPhone 5 and iOS 6. This means that the application now stretches across the entire 4-inch screen of the new iPhone. It also allows users to edit posts on their mobile phones and save images to camera roll, while iPad owner can now search for people and posts.

More Google News

Other than the Google+ v2.3, it was reported that the search engine giant tweaked its mobile search home page by adding a new “hidden sidebar”. It appears that Google is putting more focus on its mobile web counterpart, despite a bevy of updates for its mobile apps.

It was reported that the hidden sidebar contains all of the search engine’s products and services. The top of the screen contains links to web and image search. Also included on this section is the Google+ notification area with a drop-down menu, which enables a user to view his or her complete profile.

The addition of the hidden sidebar on the search engine’s mobile web version is something that users will definitely welcome. That’s because it allows them to access all Google services in a more refined manner.

The Google+ for mobile is now available via free download from the App Store and Google Play for Apple and Google respectively. Go download it, give it a spin, and don’t forget to share your thoughts about it on the comments section below.

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Source: Social Media Marketing | BigStock Images

Nowadays, businesses tend to go online in order to leverage their products and services. Social media are one of the platforms that they use in order to create a presence and establish a relationship with more people on the Internet. That’s because it offers various tools that companies can use to boost online visibility through sharing and interacting with their consumers on a personal level.

Builds Online Brand

On Facebook alone, the social networking giant boasts over one billion active monthly users. If your business doesn’t have a social media marketing campaign, you are missing out to thousands—even millions—of leads. You need the power of social media in order to put your business’ name in front of an increasing number of audience and potential consumers.

Creates Loyal Customers

The biggest advantage that social media marketing can give your business is the capability to become proactive. With the help of social media platforms, you can directly interact with your existing and potential customers on a personal level. It allows you to instantly get feedback, answer questions, build your brand’s online presence, and establish a relationship with your fans and followers without being invasive.

Improves Web Traffic

If your business has a website or an online store, social media marketing can also help boost its traffic. That’s because it allows your content to be shareable, exposing it to more users, which generates more visitors to your online platform. In turn, this could complement your other online marketing efforts, as well as boost your search engine optimization campaign.

Increases Search Rankings

Aside from driving traffic to your business’ website, social media marketing can also help improve your SEO campaign. The more buzz your content generates on various social networking sites, the higher its search engine ranking could be. That’s because search engines include social media results in their index.

When a lot of users share your content, the more likely that it will be exposed to their hundreds of friends and relatives. In addition, social media shares generate backlinks for your content, which could also help your link building and SEO campaign.

Outlining Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

How will you take advantage of social media will depend on the nature of your business and your consumer base. However, not every platform is right for your brand. Start small, and choose the channels that are most frequently used by your target audience.

Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that your social media profile is not a broadcasting platform or advertisement channel. Thus, you have to keep your interaction with your fans and followers.

The post Social Media Marketing: Why Your Business Needs It appeared first on About Social Media.